Returning to the original mind

ONLY THE ORIGINAL MIND which is born of meditation is free from desires: this is one of the most significant sutras.

FIRST, WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL MIND? - because the original mind is the very goal of all yogas.

The East has been searching continuously the path to the original mind. The original mind is that mind which you had before you were born, not in this life, but before you entered the world of desires; before you were confined to thoughts, desires, instincts, body, mind; that original space, uncontaminated by anything; that original sky, unclouded - that's the original mind.

On that original mind, layers and layers of minds are there. A man is like an onion; you go on peeling it. You peel one layer, another layer is there; you peel that layer, another layer comes up. You don't have one mind, you have layers and layers of many minds. Because in each life you have cultivated a certain mind, then in another life another mind, and so on and so forth. And the original mind is lost completely behind these minds, these layers upon layers. But if you go on peeling the onion, a moment comes when only emptiness is left in your hands. The onion has disappeared.

When minds disappear, then arises the original mind. In fact, to call it a mind is not good, but there is no other way to express it. It is a no-mind. The original mind is a no-mind. When all the minds that you have, have been dissolved, dropped, the original appears with its pristine purity, with its virginity.

This original mind you have already. You may have forgotten. You may be lost in the jungle of your mind's conditionings, but deep down, hidden behind all these layers you still live in your original mind, and in rare moments, you penetrate to it. In deep sleep, when even dreams have stopped, in dreamless sleep, you have a dip into the original mind. That's why in the morning you feel so fresh.

But if there has been a continuity of dreams the whole night, then you feel tired. You feel more tired than you were feeling when you went to bed. You could not have a dip into your inner Ganges, into your stream of pure consciousness. You could not move into it, you could not bathe in it. In the morning you feel tired, worried, tense, confused, divided. You don't have the harmony that comes out of deep sleep. But it is not coming out of deep sleep; deep sleep is just a passage to the original mind. That's why Patanjali says that samadhi is like deep sleep with only one difference: in samadhi, you move into the same original mind that you move into in sleep, but you move fully aware; in deep sleep, you slip into it unawares, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what path you are following. That's your only contact left with the original mind.

Doctors and physicians know well that whenever somebody is suffering from a disease, if he cannot sleep well, then there is no way to cure him. Sleep is therapeutic. In fact, the first thing for the patient is: how to help him move into deep sleep, deep rest. That rest cures because the patient becomes again connected with the original mind, and the original mind is a healing source. It is your source of life-energy, love. All that you have is coming from the oceanic world of your original mind.

Of course, when it has to pass so many layers of mind, it is contaminated, polluted. Your inner ecology is no longer original. It has been filled up, stuffed with many dead things. Your minds are nothing but your dead experience.

A person who wants to move into the original mind alert, aware, has to learn how to unlearn, how to unlearn the experience, how to die to the past continuously, how not to cling to the past. One moment you have lived - finished - be finished with it. Let there be no continuity with it; become discontinuous. It no longer belongs to you. It is finished and finished forever. Let it be a full point, and you get out of it as a snake moves out of the old skin and does not even look back. Just a moment before, that skin was part of his body; now, no more. Move out of the past continuously so that you can remain in the present. If you can remain in the present, you cannot go out of your original mind. The original mind knows no past and no future.

What you call the mind is nothing but past and future, past and future - a swing between past and future - and your mind never stops here-now. That's the meaning of meditation: to get out of the past, not create the future, and remain with the reality that is available here-now. Remain with it.

Suddenly, you will see there is no mind between you and the reality, between you and that which is, because mind cannot exist in the present. You cannot think about it, because the moment you think about anything it is already the past, or, it is not yet present. Thinking needs time. Hence, the sutra, that only through meditation does one come to the original mind.

Meditation is not thinking; it is dropping of thinking.

I have heard: An old tramp was on the dole and he was asked what he did all day long. "Well," he said, "sometimes I sits and thinks, and other times I just sits."

That 'just sits' is exactly the meaning of meditation. In Japan:hey call meditation zazen. 'Zazen' means: just sitting and doing nothing, just being and doing nothing; in a state of suspended mentation. And clouds open, and you can see the space, the sky. Once you know how to move in that space, it is available always. You can go on working and whenever you want, you can have a dip inside. It becomes so easy, as if you move inside the house and outside the house. Once you know the door, there is no problem in it. You don't even think about it. When it is feeling too hot, you move inside the house, into the coolness and the shelter. When it is feeling too cold and you are freezing, you move out of the house into the hot sun. You become fluid between the inner and the outer.

The mind is blocking the path to the inner. Whenever you go within yourself, again and again you find some layer of mind: some thought fragment, some desire, some planning, some dream, something of the future or something of the past. And remember, future is nothing but a projection of the past.

Future is again asking for the past in a slightly modified way, a little better. In the past you had happinesses and unhappinesses, pleasures and pains, thorns and flowers. Your future is nothing but flowers, thorns deducted, pains dropped - just pleasures and pleasures and pleasures. You go on sorting out your past, and whatsoever you feel was good and beautiful, you project it into the future.

Once you know how to get out of the past, future automatically disappears. There being no past inside, there cannot be any future. Past produces the future. Past is the mother of the future, the womb. When there is no past and no future, then what is, is. Then what is, is! Then suddenly, you are in eternity.

This is what the original mind is: with no flicker of thought, no cloud in sight, no dust around you.

Just pure space.

ONLY THE ORIGINAL MIND IS FREE FROM DESIRES... because the original mind is free from the past, free from experiences. When you are free from experiences, how can you desire? Desire cannot exist without the past. Just think: if you don't have any past, how can you desire? What will you desire? To desire anything, experience, accumulated experience is needed. If you cannot desire you will be in a vacuum - tremendously beautiful emptiness.

Only the original mind is free from desires, so don't fight with desires. That fight will not lead you anywhere because to fight with desires you will have to create anti-desires. And they are as much desires as other desires. Don't fight with desires; see the fact. The original mind cannot be found through fighting with desires. You may find a better mind, but not the original mind. You may have a sinner's mind, and if you fight with it, you may gain a saint's mind; but the saint is nothing but sinner upside-down.

Sinners and saints are not separate beings; they are two aspects of the same coin. You can turn the coin this way or that. A sinner can become the saint any moment, and the saint can become the sinner any moment. And the sinner is always dreaming of becoming a saint, and the saint is always afraid of falling again back into the mire of sin. They are not separate; they exist together. In fact, if all sinners disappeared from the world, there will be no possibility for saints. They cannot exist without sinners.

I have heard: A priest was going to his church. On the way, by the side of the road, he saw a man who had been stabbed, almost dying. Blood was flowing. He rushed, but when he went near and saw the man's face, he shrank back. He knew this face well. This man was nobody else but the devil himself. He had a picture in his church of the devil. But the devil said, "Have compassion on me. And you talk about compassion, and you talk about love! And have you forgotten? Many times you have been preaching in your church,'Love your enemy.' I am your enemy; love me."

Even the priest could not deny the validity of the argument. Yes, who is more an enemy than a devil? For the first time he became aware, but still he could not bring himself to help a dying devil.

He said, "You are right, but I know that the devil can quote scriptures. You cannot befool me. It is good that you are dying. It is very good; the world will be better if you die." The devil laughed, a very devilish laugh and he said, "You don't know; if I die, you will be nowhere. You will have to die with me. And now I am not quoting scripture, I am talking business. Without me where will you be, and your church, and your God?" Suddenly, the priest understood. He took the devil on his shoulders and went to the hospital. He had to, because even God cannot exist without the devil.

Without the sinner, the saint cannot exist. They feed upon each other, they protect each other, they defend each other. They are not two separate things; they are two poles of the same phenomenon.

The original mind is not a mind. It is neither the mind of the sinner nor the mind of the saint. The original mind has no mind in it. It has no definition, no boundary;It is so pure that you cannot even call it pure, because to call anything pure you have to bring the concept of impurity in. Even that will contaminate it. It is so pure, so absolutely pure that there is no point in saying that it is pure.

Now, tatra dhyanajam - 'born out of meditation' is a literal translation, but something is missed in it. Sanskrit is a very poetic language. It is not just a language, it is not just a grammar; it is more a poetry, a very condensed poetry. If it is rightly translated, if the sense is translated and not only the letter, then I will translate 'which is re-born of meditation'; not just born, because the original mind is not born. It is already there, just re-born; it already there, just re-cognized; it is already there, just rediscovered. God is always a rediscovery. Your own being is already there. It cannot be emphasized too much: it is already there; you reclaim it. Nothing new is born, because the original mind is not new, is not old; it is eternal, always and always and always.

Anasayam means: without any motivation, without any support, without any cause, without any ground.

The original mind exists without any motivation. It exists without any cause. It exists without any support: anasayam literally means without any support. It exists without any ground, groundless.

It exists in itself, it has no outward support. It has to be so because the ultimate cannot have any support - because the ultimate means the total - nothing is outside it. You can think that you are sitting on the earth, and then the earth is being supported by some magnetic forces in the planetary system, and the planets are supported by some other magnetic force of some super-sun. But the whole cannot have any support, because from where will the support come? The total cannot have any grounding to it.

You go to the market; of course, you have a motivation: you go to earn money. You come home; you have certain motivation: to rest. You eat food because you are hungry; there is a cause to it.

You have come to me - there is a motivation; you are in search of something. It may be vague, clear, known, not known, but the motivation is there. But what can be the motivation of the total?

It is unmotivated, it is desireles - because motivation will bring something from the outside. That's why Hindus call it leela, a play. A play comes from the inside: you are just going for a walk - there is no motivation, not even health. A health fanatic never goes for a walk; he cannot go because he cannot enjoy the very walk. He's calculating, "How many miles?" He's calculating, "How many deep breaths?" He's calculating, "How much perspiration?" He's calculating. He is taking the morning walk as work to be done, as an exercise. It is not just a play.

The English word 'illusion' is almost always used as a translation for the Eastern word 'maya'.

Ordinarily, the word 'illusion' means unreal, but that is not its true meaning. It comes from a Latin root, ludere, which means to play.'Illusion' simply means a play, and that is the real meaning of maya.

Maya does not mean illusory; it simply means playful: God is playing with Himself. Of course, He was nobody except Himself, so He is playing a hide-and-seek with Himself. He hides one of His hands and tries to find it with another hand, knowing all the time where it is.

The original mind is unmotivated, with no cause. Other minds which are not original but imposed upon are, of course, motivated, and because of motivation we cultivate them. If you want to become a doctor you will have to cultivate a certain mind: you will have to become a doctor. If you want to become an engineer you will have to cultivate another sort of mind. If you want to become a poet, you cannot cultivate the mind of a mathematician. Then you will have to cultivate the mind of a poet.

So whatsoever is your motivation, you create a certain mind.

I have heard: A lady was seated on a bus with her son. She bought a single ticket. The conductor addressed the boy, "How old are you, little fellow?"

"I am four," answered the lad.

"And when will you be five?" asked the conductor.

The boy glanced at his mother, who was smiling her approval of the conversation, and said, "When I get off this bus."

He has been taught to say something but still he cannot under stand the motivation. He has been taught to say 'four years' to save a ticket, but he does not know the motivation of it so he repeats like a parrot.

Every child is more in tune with the original mind than grownups. Look at children, playing, running around: you will not find any motivation in particular. They are enjoying, and if you ask for what, they will shrug their shoulders. It is almost impossible to communicate with grown-ups. The children simply feel it almost impossible; there exists no bridge, because the grown-up asks a very silly question: "For what?" The grown-up lives with a certain economic mind. You do something to earn something. Children are not yet aware of this constant motivation. They don't know the language of desire, they know the language of playfulness. That's the meaning when Jesus says, "You will not be able to enter into the kingdom of God unless you are like small children." He's saying that unless you become a child again, unless you drop motivation and become playful.... Remember, work has never led anybody to God. And people who are working their path towards God will go on moving in a circle in the market-place; they will never reach Him. He is playful, and you have to be playful.

Suddenly, communion; suddenly, a bridge.

Meditate playfully, don't meditate seriously. When you go into the meditation hall, leave your serious faces where you leave your shoes. Let meditation be fun. 'Fun' is a very religious word; 'seriousness' is very irreligious. If you want to attain to the original mind, you will have to live a very non-serious, though sincere life; you will have to transform your work into play; you will have to transform all your duties into love. 'Duty' is a dirty word; of course, a four-letter word.

Avoid duty. Bring more love to function. Change your work more and more into a new energy which you can enjoy, and let your life be more of a fun, more of a laughter, and less of desire and motivation. The more you are motivated, the more you will cling to a certain mind. You have to, because the motivation can be fulfilled only by a certain mind. And if you want to drop all mind - and all minds are to be dropped - only then do you attain to your innermost nature, your spontaneity. It is totally different, a different language from desire.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

There was a case against Mulla Nasrudin in the court. After hearing the early part of the evidence in a case brought before the County Court, the judge directed that the remainder of the case should be heard 'in camera'. Mulla Nasrudin, the defendant, objected on the grounds that he did not know the meaning of the word 'in camera', but the judge over-ruled the objections, saying, "I know what it means, the defending counsel knows what it means, the prosecution knows what it means, and the jury knows what it means; now clear the Court."

This having been done, counsel for the defense asked Mulla Nasrudin, the defendant, to tell the court in his own words what had happened on the night in question. "Well," said Mulla Nasrudin, "I was walking this girl home along a country lane and we decided to take a short-cut across a field.

Half-way across the field, she seemed tired, so we sat down for a rest. It was a nice summer's night and I felt a bit romantic, so I gave her a kiss, and she gave me a kiss, and I gave her a kiss, and she gave me a kiss, and ten minutes later, hi-tiddly-hi-tee."

The judge said, "Hi-tiddly-hi-tee? - what on earth does that mean?"

"Well," answered Nasrudin, "the defending counsel knows what it means, the prosecuting counsel knows what it means, and the jury knows what it means - and if you had been there with your camera, you'd know what it means!"

Desire has its own language, motivation has its own language, and all languages are of desire and motivation - different desires. Let me tell you this: Christianity is a language for a certain desire. It is not religion. Hinduism is a language for some other desire, but it is not a religion; and so on and so forth.

The original mind has no language. You cannot reach to it by being a Hindu, a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Jaina, a Buddhist, no. These are all desires. Through them you want to attain something. They are your greed projected.

The original mind is known when you drop all desiring, all languages, all minds. And you suddenly don't know who you are. A religious person is one who has dropped all his identity with any pattern of thinking and is simply standing there naked, alone, surrounded by existence without any dressing, without any covering of language and minds - an onion, peeled completely; emptiness has come into the hands.

So how to attain to this original mind? Now, one of the most important problems in religion has to be understood: the original mind is free from desires, and the way to attain it is to become desireless.

A problem arises for the thinking intellect: what is primary? - whether we have to drop the desires, and then can we attain the original mind? But then the problem arises that if only the desires are dropped when the original mind is attained, then how can we drop desires before it is attained? Or, if the original mind has to be attained, then desires drop of themselves, of their own accord, as a consequence of it. Then we have to attain the original mind when desires are still there, and the original mind cannot be attained without dropping desires, so a paradox arises. But the paradox is only because your intellect divides. In fact, the original mind and being desireless are not two things; it is just one phenomenon talked about in two ways. It is just one energy - call it desirelessness or call it the original mind - it is not two things. It happens simultaneously; I know.

Unless the original mind is attained you cannot become absolutely desireless, but you can become ninety-nine point nine per cent desireless, and that is the way. You start understanding your desires.

Through understanding, many of them simply disappear because they are simply stupid. They have not led you anywhere except into more and more frustration. They have opened doors for hell and nothing else - more anguish, more anxiety, more pain and agony. Just look at them; they will disappear. First, desires which have led you into frustration will disappear, and then you will attain to a more keen perspective. Then you will see that desires which you have been thinking up to now, desires which have led you into pleasure, have also not led you into pleasure - because whatsoever seems to be pleasant finally, eventually, turns sour and bitter.

So pleasure seems to be a trick of desire: to trick you into pain. First the painful will drop, and then you will be able to see that the pleasure is illusory, unreal, a dream. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of desires will disappear through understanding, and then the final happens. It happens simultaneously: a hundred per cent of desires disappear, and the original mind arises in a single moment, not as cause and effect, but simultaneous, together.

It is better to use Carl Gustav Jung's term for it: synchronicity. They are not related as cause and effect. They appear together simultaneously, and that too has to be said that way because I have to use language. Otherwise they are one, two faces of the same coin. If you look through understanding, meditation, you will call it the original mind. If you look through your desires, passions, you will call it desirelessness. When you call it desirelessness it simply shows that you have been comparing it with desire; when you call it the original mind, it simply shows that you have been comparing it with the mechanical minds, but you are talking about one and the same thing.

Wherever you are, you are in a mechanical mind. Whoever you are, you are in a mechanical mind, imprisoned. Don't feel sorry for yourself. That's natural. Every child has to learn something; that creates mind. And every child has to learn ways to survive in the world; that creates the mind. Don't feel angry against your parents or against your society; that is not going to help. In love they have helped you; it was natural.

You needed a mind to survive, and every society tries to force every child because all children, as born, are wild. They have to be tamed, they have to be framed. They come frameless. It will be difficult for them to survive and live in a world where much struggle goes on, where survival is a continuous problem. They have to become efficient in certain ways to protect themselves. They have to be armoured, protected, sealed against the inimical forces in the world. They have to be taught to behave like others; they have to be taught to be imitative. The mechanical mind is created through imitation. The original mind is created by dropping imitation.

I have heard: Three ghosts were playing cards when a fourth ghost opened the door and came in.

The draft from the outside blew all the cards on the floor. The new ghost was a child ghost - very young, very new to the world of the ghosts. One of the ghosts looked up and said, "Can't you use the keyhole like everybody else?"

Now even ghosts have to be trained: "There is no need to open the door; come through the keyhole as everybody is doing!"

That's how parents go on teaching you - imitate - and those who are great imitators are appreciated.

A child who does not imitate is punished. A rebellious child is punished, an obedient child is praised.

Obedience is thought to be a great value, and rebellion a great disvalue. The whole society tries to make you obedient, forces you: through awards, through punishments, fear, appreciation, ego- enhancement. There are a thousand and one ways to force you to just imitate others, because that is the only way to give you a frame, to give you a narrowness, to give you a tamed discipline. But of course, this is at a very great cost. It had to happen, it has happened, and there was no other way. Nobody could have avoided it, and I don't see that there will ever be a possibility of avoiding it completely. More or less, it will be there.

People ask me, if I had to teach children, what would I teach them? But whatsoever you teach them will give them a mind. You can teach them rebellion, but that too will give them a mind. They will start imitating the rebellious people. Again they will be framed.

Krishnamurti has a few schools around the world to teach children so that they don't become imitators - but they become imitators all the same. They start imitating Krishnamurti. The problem is very subtle. When you teach the children not to imitate, they start imitating you; they say, "Don't imitate!" You teach them that imitation is a disvalue, and of course, you use the same means. If they imitate they are condemned; everybody looks down upon them. If they become rebellious, they are appreciated. It is the same mechanism of award and punishment, of fear and greed. They become imitation rebels, but how can a rebel be an imitator?

There is no way to avoid the mind, but there is a way to come out of it. It has to be accepted as a necessary evil of being born in a society, of being born out of parents. It is a necessary evil to be tolerated. Of course, make it as loose as possible, that's all. Make it as liquid as possible, that's all.

A good society is the society which gives you a mind, and yet keeps you alert that one day this mind has to be dropped - "This is not any ultimate value; it has to be gone through but gone beyond also.

It has to be transcended." A mind has to be given, but there is no need to give an identity with the mind. If the identity remains a little relaxed, when people are grown up they will be able to come out of it more easily, with less pain, less agony, less effort.

Whether you are rich or poor, whether you are white or black, whether you are educated or uneducated, it makes no difference; we are in the same boat: the boat of the artificial mind. And that's the problem. So you can become rich from being poor, or you can renounce your riches and can become a beggar, a Buddhist bhikkhu, a monk, but that will not change you. You will still remain in the same boat. You will simply be changing roles. You will be changing personalities, but your essence will remain confined.

I have heard: The millionaire saw the old tramp wandering around his garden and shouted to him, "Get out of here this minute!" The tramp said, "Look here mister, the only difference between you and me is that you are making your second million, while I'm still working on my first" - not much of a difference.

The poor man, the rich man, the educated, the uneducated, the cultured, the uncultured, the civilized, the primitive, the Western, the Eastern, the Christian, the Hindu: it makes no difference.

Differences may be of some quantity, but not of quality. We are all in the mind, and the whole of religion is an effort to get beyond it.

This is something which has been very, very difficult to be understood in the West, because in the West only two categories exist: pure and impure, the saintly and the sin, the divine and the devilish, heaven and hell, black and white. The whole West follows the Aristotelian logic, and it has not yet come to be aware of something transcendental which goes beyond both and is neither. Sutras like this are very difficult to be understood by a Western mind because the mind has a certain frame.

The frame says, "How is it possible? - a man is either good or bad! How can a man be possible, a mind be possible which is neither?. - you will be either good or bad." The dichotomy, the dualism is very clear in the Western mind. It is analytical.

The sutra says, "The yogi's karmas are neither pure nor impure because they come out of the original mind." Now, many things are implied here.

You see somebody dying and immediately, in the Aristotelian mind, a problem arises: if God is good, why death; if God is good, why poverty; if God is good, why cancer? If God is good, then everything has to be good. Otherwise, doubt arises. Then God cannot be. Or, if He is, then He cannot be good.

And how can you call a God 'God' who is not even good? So the whole of Christian theology, for centuries, has been working out this problem; how to explain it away? But it is impossible - because with the Aristotelian mind it is impossible. You can avoid it, but you cannot completely dissolve it because it arises out of the very structure of that mind.

In the East we say that God is neither good nor bad, so whatsoever is happening, is happening.

There is no moral value in it. You cannot call it good or bad. You call it such because you have a certain mind. It is in reference to your mind that something becomes good and something becomes bad.

Now look.... Adolf Hitler was born; if the mother had killed Adolf Hitler, would it have been good or bad? Now, we can see that if the mother had killed Adolf Hitler, it would have been very good for the world. Millions of people were killed; it would have been better to kill one person. But if the mother had killed Adolf Hitler she would have been punished tremendously. She might have been given a life sentence, or she might have been shot by the government, by the court, by the police.

And nobody would have said that the government was wrong, because it is a sin to kill a child. But do you see the implications? Then Adolf Hitler killed millions of people. He had almost brought the world to the very verge of death. Nobody has been such a calamity ever before. All Genghis Khans' and Tamurlaines become pale before him. He was the greatest murderer ever. But what to say? - whether he did well or not is still difficult because life is never complete, and unless it is complete how can you evaluate it? Maybe whatsoever he did was good. Maybe he cleaned the earth of all wrong people - who knows? And who can decide it? Maybe without him the world would have been worse than it is.

Whatsoever we say is good is just according to a certain narrow mind. Whatsoever we say is bad is also according to a certain narrow mind.

There is a Taoist fable: A man had a very beautiful horse, so precious that even the emperor was envious and jealous. Many times offers had come to him, and people were ready to pay whatsoever amount of money he expected or asked. But the old man would laugh. He would say, "I love the horse and how can you sell your love? So thank you for your offer, but I cannot sell it."

Then one day, in the night the horse was stolen, or something happened. The horse was not found in the stable the next morning. The whole town gathered and they said, "Now look, silly old man! - the horse is gone. And you could have become very rich. Such a calamity has never happened in this town. And you are poor and old. You should have sold it; you did wrong."

The old man laughed. He said, "Don't go into evaluations, and don't say anything about good or bad, and don't talk about calamity or blessing. I know only one thing: that last night the horse was in the stable, this morning he is not there, that's all. But I don't say anything about it. Just remain with the fact: the horse is not in the stable - finished. Why bring any mind to it? - whether it is good or bad, whether it should not have happened, whether it is a calamity; forget all about it."

The people were shocked. They felt insulted that they had come to show their sympathy, and this

fool was talking philosophy! - "So it has been good. This man needed to be punished, and Gods are always just."

But after fifteen days, the horse came back. It had not been stolen; it had escaped to the forest. And there came twelve other horses with it - wild horses, very beautiful, very strong. The whole town gathered. They said, "This old man knows something.... He was right; it was not a calamity. We were wrong." And they said, "We are sorry. We could not understand the whole situation, but it is a great blessing. Not only is your horse back, but twelve other horses! And we have never seen such beautifully strong horses. You will gather a lot of money."

The old man said again, "Don't bother about whether it is a blessing or a calamity. Who knows?

Future is unknown, and we should not say anything unless we know the future. You are again making the same mistake. Just say,'The horse is back, and is back with twelve other horses,' that's all." They said, "Now don't try to befool us. We know you have gathered a lot of money."

But after a week, the only son of the old man was teaching a horse, a wild horse, trying to tame it.

He fell down from the horse. All over he was broken - many fractures. He was the only support of the old man, and the people said, "This old man knows, really knows... now this is a great calamity.

This coming of the horse has been a misfortune. The only support in his old age, his son, is almost dead. He had been supporting the old man; now the old man will have to serve the young man because he will remain in the bed for his whole life. And he was just going to be married. Now the marriage will be impossible!"

And they gathered again, and again they spoke, and the old man said, "How to tell you? You go on doing the same thing again and again. Only say this much: that my young son has many fractures, that's all. Why move in the future? Why do you go so fast into the future? And you have seen for these few days that again and again you were wrong, but again and again you go off from the present and you start evaluating."

And it happened that after a few days, the country went to war with a neighboring country, and all the young men of the town were forcibly taken into the army. Only this old man's son was left because he had fractures. They again gathered, but before they gathered the old man said, "Keep quiet!

When will you understand? - life is complex." This is the Eastern attitude, in essence.

The yogi lives in the original mind, in suchness. Whatsoever happens, happens; he never evaluates it. And he does not do anything on his own accord, he becomes just a vehicle of the whole. The whole flows through him. He becomes like a hollow bamboo, a flute. The yogi carries that which comes from God, from the total. That's why Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, "Don't be worried, and don't think in terms that whatsoever you are going to do will be violence and you will kill so many people. If God wills so, let it be so. If He wants to kill, He will kill, whether through you or through somebody else. In fact," Krishna says, "He has already killed. You are just instrumental, so don't become too identified with your actions. Remain a witness."

Whatsoever ordinary people are doing - by ordinary I mean people who have not attained to their innermost core of being; people who are living with their minds are ordinary, who are living with their ideas and thoughts and ideologies and scriptures, whatsoever they are doing - either their actions are pure, or their actions are impure, or their actions are mixed; but their actions are not spontaneous, not original. They react, they don't act. Their response is a reaction. It is not an overflowing of energy. They are not available to this moment, right now.

Somebody asked Lin Chi, a Zen Master, "If somebody comes and attacks you, what will you do?" He shrugged his shoulders. He said, "Let him come, and I will see. I cannot be prepared beforehand. I don't know. I may laugh, or I may weep, or I may jump and kill that man. Or, I may not bother about it at all. But I don't know. Let the man come. The moment will decide, not I. The whole will decide, not I. How can I say what I will do?"

An enlightened man does not live through the mind. He has no frame around him. He is vast emptiness. Nobody knows how God will act through him in that moment. He will not interfere - that's all - because there is nobody to interfere. Mind interferes; he is no more a mind. He will not try to do something which he thinks is good, and he will not try to avoid something which he thinks is bad. He will not try anything. He will be simply in the hands of the divine and let the thing happen.

He will not interpret later on that whatsoever has happened is good or bad. No, an enlightened man never looks back, never evaluates, never looks ahead, never plans. Whatsoever the moment... and he allows the moment to decide. In that moment, everything converges. The whole existence takes part, so nobody knows.

Lin Chi said, "If somebody attacks me, nobody knows. It will depend. The somebody may be Gautam Buddha, and if he attacks me I will laugh. I may touch his feet at how compassionate it is of him to attack me, poor Lin Chi. But it will depend on the moment, on so many things that it is unpredictable."

Just at the beginning of this century, in the year 1900, a great scientist, Max Planck, came to make one of the greatest discoveries ever. He came to feel and he came to discover that existence seems to be discontinuous, that it is not a continuity. It is not as if you pour oil from one pot into another.

Then the oil has a continuity; it falls in a continuous stream. Max Planck said, "Existence is such: as if you are pouring peas from one carton into another - discontinuous - each pea falling separately."

He said, "The whole life is discontinuous. These discontinuous elements he calls 'quanta'. That is his Theory of Quantum. 'Quanta' means: each thing is separate from each other thing, and discontinuous, and between two things there is a space. Now, that space is holding everything because two things are not connected, two atoms are not connected between themselves. The space, the emptiness is holding both. They are not connected directly, they are connected through space. Still, nobody has tried some parallel theory about mind, but exactly the same is the case.

Two thoughts are not connected with each other, and thoughts are discontinuous. One thought, another thought, another thought, and between these thoughts, there are gaps, very small gaps - that is your inner space. That's what original mind is. One cloud passes, another cloud passes; between the two is the sky. One thought passes, another passes; between the two is the original mind. If you think your thoughts are continuous, then you think of yourself as a mind.

In fact, there is nothing like a mind - only thoughts, discontinuous thoughts wandering within you, moving so fast that you cannot see the gaps. These thoughts are held by your inner space. Atoms are supported by the outer space, thoughts are supported by the inner space. If you count matter, you become a materialist; if you count your thoughts, you become a mentalist. But mind and matter, both are false. They are processes, discontinuous. And I would like to say to you that this is yoga's ultimate synthesis: that the inner space and the outer space are not two. Your original mind and God's original mind are not two. Your artificial mind is different from God, but your original mind is nothing different. It is the same.

If you do a pure karma, a good act, a saintly act, then desires will arise, of course, to do more good. If you do an impure act, desires will arise to do more impure acts, because whatsoever you do creates a certain habit in you to repeat it. People go on repeating. Whatsoever you have done, you become skillful in doing it. If you do a mixed act, of course a mixed desire arises in which good and bad are both mixing. But all are artificial minds. Even the mind of the saint is still a mind.

I have heard:

Abe Cohen, a great businessman, a Jew, was convicted of murder before the ending of capital punishment. The prison governor visited him on the morning of his execution. "Mr. Cohen," he said, "it will cost this country 100 pounds to hang you." "Bad business," said Abe. "Give me 95 pounds, and I will shoot myself."

A businessman is a businessman. He goes on thinking in terms of business, in terms of money. He has become skillful about it. Just watch whatsoever you have been doing - you have a tendency to repeat it, unawares, unconsciously. You go on repeating the same things again and again and again, and of course, the more you repeat, the more you are caught in the habit. A time comes when even if you want to leave the habit, the habit has become so deep-rooted that you want to leave it, but it does not want to leave you.

I have heard, it happened: A certain teacher, out of indigence, wore only thin cotton cloth in the winter. A storm carried a bear down from the mountains by way of the river. Its head was hidden in the water. The children, seeing its back, cried, "Teacher, look! A fur-coat has fallen into the water, and you are cold. Go and fetch it!" The teacher, in the extremity of his need, leapt into the river to catch the fur coat. The bear quickly attacked him and caught him. "Teacher," the boys shouted from the bank, "either grasp the coat, or let it go and come out!" "I am letting the fur coat go," shouted the teacher, "but the fur coat is not letting me go!"

That's the problem with habits: first you cultivate them, then, by and by, they have become almost a second nature to you. Then you want to drop them, but it is not so easy to drop them. What to do?

You will have to become more aware.

Habits cannot be dropped. There are only two ways to drop them: one is to change the habit for a substitute habit - but that is just changing one problem for another, it is not going to help much; the other is to become more aware. Whenever you repeat a habit, become aware. Even if you have to repeat it, repeat it, but repeat with a witnessing, an alertness, an awareness. That awareness will make you separate from the habit, and the energy that you go on giving to the habit unknowingly, will not be given anymore. By and by, the habit will shrink; the water will not be flowing through it, the channel will be blocked. By and by, it will disappear.

Never try to change one habit into another, because all habits are bad. Even good habits are bad, because they are habits. Don't try to change impure habits into pure habits. It is good for the society that you change your bad habits into good habits. Rather than going to the pub every day, if you go to the church or to the temple every day, it is good for the society. But as far as you are concerned it is not going to help much. You have to go beyond habits. Then it is helpful.

The society wants you to become moral, because by being immoral you create troubles - society is finished. Once you become moral, the society is finished. Now it is none of the society's business to be bothered with you. If you are immoral, the society is not finished with you; something has to be done about you. Once you are moral, the society is finished. The society garlands you and cheers you and says, "You are a very good man" - finished. The society is no more in trouble with you, but you yourself have yet long to go; the journey is not complete yet. The bad habit is against society, and habit, as such, is against your original nature.

A flea rushed into the pub just before closing time, ordered five double scotches, drank them straight down, rushed into the street, leapt high in the air and fell flat on his face. He picked himself up, looked unsteadily around and muttered, "Darn it! Someone has moved my dog."

For many lives you have been drinking and drinking out of unconsciousness. Everybody is an alcoholic, and of course you go on falling again and again.

The deep problem is: how to become aware, how not to be unconscious. From where to start? Don't try to fight with some very deep-rooted habit. You will be defeated. The fur coat will not leave you so easily. Start with very neutral habits.

For example: you go for a walk; just be aware that you are walking. It is a neutral thing. Nothing is invested in it. You are looking at the trees; just look at the trees and be aware. Don't look with clouded eyes. Drop all thinking. Just for a few moments even, just look at the trees, and just look.

Look at the stars. Swimming, just be alert to the inner feeling that happens inside your body while you are swimming, the inner. Feel it. You are taking a sun bath; feel how you start feeling inside:

warm, settled, rested. While falling asleep, just watch how you are feeling inside. Inside, outside - try to be aware of the coolness of the sheets, the darkness in the room, the silence outside, or the noise outside. Suddenly, a dog barks - neutral things; bring your consciousness to them first. And then, by and by, proceed.

Then, try to be aware of your good habits, because good habits re not so deep-rooted as bad habits.

Good habits need much sacrifice on your part, so very few people try to cultivate good habits. And even those who try to cultivate good habits try very few good habits; just underneath, many bad habits are there.

First try neutral, then good, then move by and by to bad habits. And finally, remember that each habit has to be made aware. Once you have become aware of your whole habitual pattern, that habitual pattern is your mind. Any day the shift will happen. Suddenly, you will be in the no-mind.

When all the habits of your life have become aware, you don't do them unconsciously and you don't cooperate with them unconsciously, any day, when the situation point comes - at one hundred degrees - suddenly, a shift will happen. You will find yourself in emptiness. That is the original mind which is neither pure nor impure.

Whatsoever you do remains like a seed in you. And whenever a certain circumstance arises which can be helpful to you, the seed sprouts. Sometimes we carry seeds for many lives. The right circumstance, the right season may not be come across, but whenever it comes it creates very complex problems. Suddenly, you come across a man on the road and you feel very, very repelled, and you have not ever known the man. You have not even thought about him, heard about him; an absolute stranger, and suddenly you feel repelled, or, you feel attracted. Suddenly you feel as if you have met him before. Suddenly you feel as if a deep surge of love-energy is arising in you for this stranger, as if you have been always close, always close. A seed has been carried from some other life - a certain circumstance - and that seed starts sprouting. Suddenly, you are miserable for no reason at all. And you think, "Why am I miserable? Why?" There seems to be no cause in the visible world. You may be carrying a seed for this misery; just a right moment has arrived.

Julia came to her father with her head downcast. "Poppa," she said, "you know that rich Mr. Wolfe?

Well, he betrayed me, and I am going to have a baby."

"My God!" said the father. "Where is he? I will kill him! Give me his address. I will murder him!"

Dashing to the rich man's home, he cornered him and in a loud voice told him what he intended to do. But the rich Mr. Wolfe was quite calm. "Don't get excited," he said. "I am not running away, and I intend to do right by your daughter. If she has a boy, she gets 50,000; ifitisagirl, shegets35,000.

Is that fair?"

The father halted, while the look of anger on his face changed. "And if it is a miscarriage," he pleaded, "will you give her another chance? "

Suddenly, the circumstances had changed. Now a seed of greed sprouts. He had come to murder, but just the mention of money and he had forgotten all about murder; he's asking, "Will you give her another chance?"

Watch... watch yourself continuously; circumstances change and you immediately change.

Something in you starts sprouting, something starts closing.

The man of original mind remains the same. Whatsoever happens, he watches it, but there are no longer any seeds of desire left from the past. He does not act through his past, he simply responds; out of nothingness comes his response. Sometimes you also act in that way, but very rarely. And whenever you act that way, you feel a tremendous fulfillment and satisfaction and contentment. It happens sometimes.

Somebody is dying, drowning in the river, and you simply jump without any thought. You don't think whether to save this man or not, whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan, or a sinner or a saint, or why you should be worried. No, you don't think. Suddenly, it happens. Suddenly, your mind is pushed away and your original mind acts. And when you get that man out, you feel tremendous contentment, as you have never felt before. A harmony arises in you. You feel very fulfilled. Whenever something out of your nothingness happens, you feel blissful.

Bliss is a function of your nothingness.

And it goes on... your life changes: you die in this body, you enter into another womb, but the innermost form clings with you. Whatsoever you have done, desired, experienced, accumulated, that fur coat clings with you; you carry it with you. The death, ordinary death, is only the death of the body; the mind continues. The real death, the ultimate death we call samadhi, is not only the death of the body; it is the death of the mind as such. Then there is no more birth, because then there is no seed left to come back to, no desire to be fulfilled. Nothing left, one simply disappears like a fragrance....

Philosophers go on asking, "When did this world start?" Yoga Is a very tremendous thing: the world has never started. The desire has no beginning, because to desire to live is eternal. It has, been always there. Yoga does not believe in any creation. It is not at God created the world on some day, at some moment. No, desire has been always there. There was no beginning for desire, but there is an end to it. This has to be understood. It is very logical, but if you understand you will be able to feel the point.

Desire has no beginning, but it has an end. Desirelessness has a beginning, but has no end; and the circle is complete. Desire has no ginning but has an end. If you become aware, the end comes, and en starts desirelessness. Desirelessness has a beginning, but then there is no end to it. "The world has no beginning"; we have been ying in the East, "it has continued always and always; but it has end." For a Buddha, it ends. Then it is no longer there. Just like dream, it disappears. But the no-world - nirvana, kaivalya, moksha - that has a beginning but no end. So we never ask when the world started. We have not bothered about it because it has never started.

We have not paid much attention to the birth dates of Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, but we have paid much attention to the day that hey attained enlightenment - because that is the real beginning of something which is never going to end. The enlightenment day of Buddha is very significant; that we have remembered, that we have worshipped again and again, again and again. Nobody knows when e was born; nobody has bothered about it. In fact, the myth says hat he was born on the same day as the day he died, and he became enlightened also on the same day. My feeling is, we have forgotten his birthday and his death day; we remember only his enlightenment day. But only that is significant: that his birthday as also his death day, because that is the only significant thing at happens in a life - the beginning of the endless.

Desire has no beginning, has been always here, but it can end. Desirelessness can begin and will never end. And between desire and desirelessness, the circle is complete. It is the same energy. That which has been desire becomes desirelessness. It is the same energy. And of course, desirelessness never ends. A man who has attained has become liberated, never comes back, because evolution cannot go backwards. There is no way to go backwards. Higher and higher we go, until the ultimate is attained. But from that, there is no point of falling back.

Try to be aware of your desire because that has been your life up to now. Don't be caught in it. Try to understand it. Don't try to fight also, because that is again getting caught in it in another way. Just try to understand it: how it grips you, how it enters into you and makes you absolutely unconscious.

I have heard:

"Abe, I have a wonderful bargain for you. I can get an elephant for 200."

"But Izzy, don't be an idiot. What am I going to do with an elephant?"

"What are you going to do with an elephant? Don't be an idiot yourself! Think of the bargain. Where can you pick up an elephant for 200, tell me?"

"But I have a two-room flat. Where am I going to put an elephant?"

"What is the matter with you? Don't you recognize a bargain when you see one? As a matter of fact, I have even better news for you. If you want, I can get you two elephants for 300."

"Ah, now you are talking."

Now a man who has only a two-room flat has forgotten completely.

Watch desire. It goes on befooling you; it goes on leading you astray. It goes on leading you into illusions, into dreams.

Watch.

Before you take a step, watch, be alert. And by and by, you will see desires disappear, and the energy that was invested in desires is released. Millions are the desires, and when the energy is released from all those desires you become a tremendous upsurge of energy. You start soaring high. Naturally, the energy goes on pooling inside. The level of energy goes higher and higher, and one day, you start overflowing from sahasrar. You become a lotus, a one-thousand-petalled lotus.